Saturday, February 5, 2011

No Smoke, Still Insufferable

(Full Disclosure: I was married to a smoker for four years. She said she'd quit while we dated, and while we were engaged, then never made much of an effort at it once we were married- basically, it was my responsibility to just get over it. I had a headache pretty much every other day for four years. If she hadn't been the most stunningly beautiful woman I'd ever met, I probably would never have started dating her. And oh, our divorce had nothing to do with her smoking.)

Now that that's been taken care of...

I'm not especially annoyed by the all-too-common practice of having five people tell us what one could tell us just as well- even when they finish each other's sentences and even interrupt each other. I don't care about the ostentatious blowing of smoke rings. I'm even willing to shrug off the entirely gratuitous "it's a free country- isn't it?" we get near the end (Yes, it's a free country. What's your point? Still pissed that people woke up one day and decided they didn't think they should be required to "share" your pathetic addiction just because they wanted to eat at a nice restaurant, have a drink at a bar, or do work in an office?)

No, what really pisses me off about this ad is the truly retro "Smoking Is Still The Coolest Thing You Can Do" message which is cleverly shoved down our throats throughout. One guy looks like a cross between a secret agent and a mob boss (maybe he's Rico from that awful Copa Cobana song.) A super-glamorous woman looks like she's ready for an extremely expensive night on the town- just her, her equally glamorous friends, and her e-cigarettes. The point in clear: Smoking still makes you look Far Better than Average, the kind of person People Want to be Like. And now you can do it in public places again (I worry about anyone complaining about having water vapor blown into their faces- I seriously think that any of these people would lose it, right then and there.)

Also- is it just me, or do all these people look like refugees from late-night phone sex ads?

2 comments:

Hey, I was married to a smoker too- "I'll stop when we get married, I'll stop when you get pregnant... when the baby's born... when this baby is born, no, this one... when donkeys fly out of my ass..."

He quit when I had a cancer scare and when I thanked him for finally stopping (the youngest baby was six years old by then), he said he stopped because it was too expensive.

For the record, the people in this ad looked like idiots. Maybe I'm just safe from the "smoking is cool" thing because my mother smoked from the time she was sixteen till three years ago (when she was in the hospital for over a month with unrelated health problems). To me, smoking was something uncool mothers did to pass the time.